Paradigm is a short word that has the intimidation factor of a much longer word. It’s one of those that we know the meaning of, but can’t put into words particularly well. So let’s start with getting on the same page with the meaning, I’m going for the third entry in Websters:

a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly : a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind

A cognitive framework if you will. A way of thinking. This gained meaning for me in a class at Stanford called Programming Paradigms. Simply put, there are many different ways to achieve a desired outcome in programming. There are different ways to think about how to approach solving the problem. This is why different programming languages are useful – they can enable these different ways of thinking. Everything is an object. Or everything is a list.

Paradigms certainly aren’t limited to programming however. I think they should be more widely used in our every day lives. The right mindset has the potential to offer a better solution to our problems, but more importantly having the flexibility to shift paradigms gives us the ability to empathize. If you are unable to shift your perspective, you will never truly understand how someone believes what they do.

Thought exercises should be a part of our education to promote an open minded population. Simply having an open minded population would solve so many of our problems. The goal for these exercises is to keep an open mind for a set period of time, not to ultimately believe it.

Here are some mind blowing thoughts to try out:

• The world is a computer simulation, as explored in the Matrix. You and your independent decisions are really just a program that is able to learn and grow. Scientifically there could be some validity to this. The laws of physics break down at the smallest margins. Any simulation has a limit to how many calculations can be made, and the result would look like what physicists have observed. What would this mean? Would this change anything?
• Democrats’ willingness for the government to help the poor and less fortunate are selfishly unloading the job on someone else so that they personally don’t have to do it and don’t feel guilty. What pieces of evidence can be used to support this? How do personal feelings get in the way?
• That money has no real meaning. It has value because we all agree that it does, but if that were to change, what would happen? If only a handful of people realized this, what would change? Would those people be better or worse off?
• 1984 and the Hunger Games feature worlds that appear completely unrealistic. But if one of those societies is the ending point, and today’s society is the beginning, what would the path look like to get there? Have we already started on that path? Can you defend that argument?
• There is a limit to how many people the earth can support – one day that limit will be hit and the leaders of the world will realize it. The days of parents deciding how many children they want to have are limited. What will the warning signs of this limit look like? How far past the limit will we blow past until it gets to the point of controlling births? How will it feel having this aspect of your life controlled?

Hopefully at least one of those blew your mind. If I were in charge of education, how would I implement these thought exercises? Introduce these ideas and form small groups to explore them. Then have each person come up with a 2-3 minute argument supporting the case. Basically everyone practices defending the pro side of a radical argument. Someday it will be important to understand why the crazies believe what they do.

I like to occasionally examine my comfort in life in different areas, especially socially and professionally. And it’s not because I want to make sure I’m nice and comfy – quite the opposite. If I’m not pushing my comfort zone in these areas then I’m not growing. If I’m not growing then I’m content with mediocrity. If I’m content with mediocrity then I’m letting time pass and simply waiting out my days left on this planet.

Social

New Zealand is full of some serious hiking and with serious hikes come seriously long conversations. On day 4 of 5 at Abel Tasman Tom, Jess, and I were ranking our favorite years at Stanford. This was very hard considering we had more fun than is legal. Seriously, some of the stuff was illegal. By examining my 4 years, there was one that comparatively stood out as the worst – my sophomore year. The year before I had established my friends and gotten to know my team and fraternity. And then I comparatively coasted socially through sophomore year, not branching out as much, sticking more to my comfort zone.

I’m not the most outgoing person in the world, but I’ve come to realize that it makes me happy to make new friends. Even though I love my current friends and it might be uncomfortable, I know that I am much happier when I push my comfort zone socially.

Professional

Professionally it is also extremely important to constantly learn new things and take risks. If you’re not innovating then someone else is. If you’re not learning new skills and making yourself replaceable in your current role, someone else will. There’s no such thing as staying in the same place. If you’re not advancing those around you are, meaning you’re going backwards.

Two years ago in NYC I shared a cab with a guy from the hotel all the way out to the airport. In rush hour. It took almost 2 hours to get there so I got to know the guy pretty well (and unfortunately can no longer claim I’ve never missed a flight). His career advice: get fired at least once. This wasn’t coming from a slacker – dude knew what’s up. His reasoning: you have to pursue your ideas with gusto in order to make it to the top. You might get fired for having ideas that clash with management or taking too big of risks. So be it. There will be another company that will value the mistakes of action of a young go-getter.

I suppose the guy in the cab took this principle to the extreme. Taking risks is good, pushing the comfort zone is great. But let’s not get too crazy about it! The best way I’ve found to look at it – how comfortable am I? Am I being challenged?

Other areas this applies: physically, financially. More?

What a year it has been! It’s been all about challenging assumptions, shifting paradigms, and setting up the life I want. Let’s take a look at a few areas.

Vacations

I spent my first significant time out of the country. And loved it. I don’t know that I’ll be satisfied with 1 or 2 week vacations ever again.

Tim Ferriss wrote about “mini-retirements” in the 4 Hour Workweek. Yes, the book is about bigger ideas than just outsourcing. It’s about crafting the life you want to live. Making it a reality. Here are a couple interviews about the mini-retirments: Using Mini-Retirements to Get More Out of Life and How to Take a Mini-Retirement: Tips and Tricks.

We all envy teachers who get the summer off (or at least part of it). Here’s what you’re thinking: “wow, wouldn’t it be great to have 2 or 3 back to back months off work? Every year!” Would you agree with this statement: I’d rather make $60,000 and have 3 months off than $80,000 working the whole year. Yes, obviously. Well guess what – no one is going to just hand it to you. You have to go out and make it happen. (And don’t tell me you could live on 25% less money – you might have to make some changes but wouldn’t it be worth 3 months off a year?)

Jobs

I think it’s really awesome that I am earning a living on my own. Yes, I realize as an employee you do in fact have to earn your pay, but it’s different. You are dependent upon a company, which is dependent upon customers. I am dependent upon customers directly. Kind of like in the old days before corporations. Or like a fixie biker (a purist removing the middle man).

But I don’t necessarily think jobs are bad. Heck, I still think I’ll have a traditional job again some day. Boy will it be different though! It will be because I want to be there, not because of money, career advancement, or even because you’re supposed to have a job. It would have to be a situation where I really believe in what we are building and the team / company are in a position to make it a reality.

Goals

Goals are a whole lot easier to meet when you feel in control of your life. With this new power you might even set some goals!

Happiness

It’s hard to realize how toxic an environment is until you remove yourself from it. My frustrations at work built up over time, but they were gradual enough that it wasn’t enough that I didn’t make any drastic moves. Just like the frog that slowly gets boiled to death, I did not jump out of my job. I wasn’t able to notice the significant impact this had on the other areas of my life.

Today the Oakland Athletics won the American League West. There are so many cool things about this, I don’t know where to start. I guess we’ll start at the beginning of the season.

Going into the season, the Texas Rangers have played in back to back World Series, had a $121 million dollar payroll, and are expected to win the division. But then in the Angels went on an offseason spending spree because they were tired of losing to Texas. They came in to the season with a $155 million dollar payroll and ready to finally knock off the Rangers. No one bothered to discuss the Athletics.

The Athletics were thought by the experts to be rebuilding. In the offseason they traded away their top two starting pitchers. And their closer. Basically they traded away everyone good for a bunch of players with very little major league experience. They came into the season with a $49 million dollar payroll – the smallest of all 30 major league teams.

And yet they kept winning games. They are so young they don’t even realize they aren’t supposed to win these games. They finished the season with 5 rookies making up their starting rotation. Somehow they went 94-68, finishing ahead of the Rangers (who they swept 3 straight to end the season) and Angels.

One more amazing thing to leave you with: today is the FIRST day of the entire year that they have been alone in first place. Finally, after 162 games they made it. Good time to end the season.
 

Memory is a funny thing. Some people remember everything from a decade ago crystal clear. Others can’t remember where they parked their car an hour ago.

Of course a certain amount of memory can be trained. I read part of the book “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything“, where a journalist with an average memory spends a year training for the U.S. Memory Championship. It’s an incredible insight into what is possible if you have the right system – check out a Slate article he wrote for a quick overview.

But that’s only one type of memory and the author said he still loses his car keys. There is a completely different type of memory freaks that are even more interesting. There was an awesome 60 Minutes episode interviewing a handful of the rare people that have what they call “superior autobiographical memory.” If you ask them – “do you remember what you did on April 7th, 1973?” – they’ll be able to tell you exactly what they did that day, the day of the week, what they wore, and what they were thinking about.

Sleep is also crucial to your memory. I learned somewhere that the last few hours (5-8) of sleep are when most the transfer of memory from RAM (short-term) to hard-drive (long-term) happens. So if you don’t get a full 8 hours of sleep, you aren’t learning as effectively as you could be. The fact that people sleep less these days than a few decades ago can also be partially blamed for a whole bunch of other things, like getting fat. Maybe New York should mandate 8 hours of sleep a night rather than banning sugary sodas? Hard to tell which would be more effective, but one gets all the blame.

Inconsequential Childhood Memories

I got thinking about memory because of a couple memories I have from 4th and 5th grade. Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time with kids this age, so I’ve been going back into my past to see what I remember. Some of these things are so inconsequential, I have no idea why I remember them but not more important things:

• We did mental math problems every day in Ms. Barth’s class – “Start with 7 … multiply by 3 … add 4 … divide by 5 – what’s the number?” Well I remember one time we did it, we started with the number of hours you sleep in a night. So I started with 9. I got it wrong because we were supposed to start with 8.
• In Ms. Walker’s 5th grade class she read off everyone’s name and you were supposed to respond if you did your homework. One time I said “yes” and she thought I said “oven” (don’t ask me how). So from then on I would answer with a household appliance. But one time I didn’t do my reading and didn’t get to say an appliance. This was the start of my 15+ year run of becoming less cool every year.
• We read Babe – they sat us down to explain the word bitch and that we shouldn’t use it.
• The TV show South Park came out – I had a friend named Kenny and we thought it was funny he dies in every episode (even though we didn’t watch it, we just knew that it happened!)
• We had a Tic-Tac-Toe tournament in our class. I made the finals where I faced off on the overhead projector against someone that also figured out how to win or tie every time. After we tied a half dozen times I got bored and tried something different so we wouldn’t just tie for all of time. I lost.

Do you have any memories from 4th or 5th grade that are just as inconsequential?

The OK Plateau is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just never get appreciably faster at it. That’s because it’s become automatic. You’ve moved it to the back of your mind’s filing cabinet. If you want to become a faster typer, it’s possible, of course. But you’ve got to bring the task back under your conscious control. You’ve got to push yourself past where you’re comfortable. You have to watch yourself fail and learn from your mistakes. That’s the way to get better at anything. And it’s how I improved my memory.